Nationwide's public enthusiasm for the 316 branches being forcibly hived off by the Royal Bank of Scotland cannot be viewed with equanimity by rivals.

This is not because the Nationwide is a cut above others.

Anyone who has been inside one of its branches recently would testify that both the décor and the staff could do with some updating.

Growing pains: Nationwide boasts that it has the capital, the solvency ratio and the IT systems to support an expansion that would take it further into the small and medium-sized business sector

Instead the Nationwide’s advantage stems from the ‘coalition agreement’ between the Tories and the LibDems.

Buried in the small print is a promise to ‘support the creation and expansion of mutuals’ so as to build a competitive banking sector.

All of this is worthy stuff and the Nationwide boasts that it has the capital, the solvency ratio and the IT systems to support an expansion that would take it further into the small and medium-sized business sector.

But the real question ought to be whether it would be the best deal for the taxpayer.

More...

There are other financial groups in the frame including Richard Branson’s Virgin Money, US private equity firm JC Flowers and a late entry from Corsair Capital, a private equity firm where former Standard Chartered boss Lord Mervyn Davies chairs the advisory board.

If the previous auction of Lloyds Banking Group branches to the Co-operative financial group is any precedent, then Virgin, Flowers et al might as well pack their bags now and sack their advisers because it is the mutual that will win.

City grandee Lord (Peter) Levene, former chair of Lloyd’s of London, is firmly of the belief that the taxpayer was diddled by the sell-off to the Co-op. So far, all that Lloyds bank received is an upfront £350m payment with the promise of more should it all work out.

The Co-op was a long way from being the highest bidder. Levene’s outfit NBNK would have funded Lloyds with £750m to £850m upfront. How useful that might have been at a time when the banks desperately need to bolster capital.

Instead, Lloyds and the government shareholder chose to go the mutual route ‘taking the shirt off Lloyds’ as the outgoing Co-op boss Peter Marks is quoted as saying. This cost Levene and NBNK around half the £60m it had allocated for advisory fees and set-up costs.

Rivals to Nationwide must make sure the playing field has not been tilted against them.

Gift of Gods

Amid all the excitement of the second coming from Ottawa, the overnight accord reached on the next bailout for Greece received scant attention. The troika (the IMF, European Central Bank and European Commission) has bent over backwards to ensure that Greece remains a member of the euro until after next year’s German elections.

The latest package required the IMF to give up on its insistence that the country’s debt be cut to a sustainable 120 per cent of total output by 2020. It has accepted a higher debt target of 124 per cent.

Greece’s borrowing costs have been cut, it has won a partial interest rate holiday and the ECB has agreed to forgo its surpluses on its holdings of Greek bonds. There is to be a second bond restructuring with private sector debt being bought in by Greece at 35 per cent of face value.

The troika has moved an extraordinary distance to make these concessions that will be watched closely elsewhere on euroland’s periphery. Other hard-pressed nations will be wondering why they cannot have some of the same. The truth is that had Greece been braver at the onset of the crisis more than two years ago, it could have been through it and out the other side by now without burning down Athens. What should have happened was a withdrawal from the euro, a sharp devaluation of 50 per cent or more and a full debt default.

It would have been incredibly uncomfortable for anyone holding cash or savings in Greek banks and many small businesses, losing their working capital, might have been damaged. But by now the pain would be over and Greece, like Argentina, would have been through the worst, growing again and creating jobs. Shock treatment would have been far preferable to slow death.

One of us

The idea that there is something distasteful about foreign-born nationals achieving high office is bizarre.

The US had no hang up about a foreign chairman of the Federal Reserve in the shape of heavy accented Austro-Hungarian-born economist Arthur Burns who preceded Paul Volcker. It has even had a German-born Secretary of State in the shape of Henry Kissinger.

It is not just football teams that have sought overseas skills. The FTSE 100 is filled with foreign-born chief executives including those at BP, Vodafone, Unilever, Marks & Spencer and Reckitt Benckiser.

By these standards Mark Carney with his Canadian background and Oxford post-graduate education is almost a native.